The reuse of texts in Indian Philosophy: General Introduction

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3 The Reuse of Texts in Indian Philosophy: Introduction

4 Elisa Freschi

56 © The Author(s) 2014. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com

7 Abstract The study of textual reuse is of fundamental importance in recon-

8 structing lost or partially lost texts, passages of which can be partly recovered

9 through other texts in which they have been embedded. Furthermore, the study of

10 textual reuse also provides one with a deeper understanding of the modalities of the

11 production of texts out of previous textual materials. Finally, it constitutes a unique

12 chance to reconsider the historicity of concepts such as “author”, “originality” and

13 “plagiarism”, which do not denote really existing universals, but have rather

14 evolved—and still evolve—in different ways in different cultural milieus. After a

15 general introduction and an analysis of the historical background of textual reuse in

16 India and Europe, the essay attempts some general conclusions regarding the for-

17 mulas introducing instances of textual reuse in Classical South Asian texts.

18

19 Keywords Originality · Indian Philosophy · Textual reuse · Quotations ·

20 Plagiarism · Interlanguage

21

22

2324 The shrewds like imitating the others and pretend that the new and the modern

25 things are their inventions. Instead, you have to imitate the men of the past by

26 studying thewritten documentation. It is by refining the art of emulation during all

27 one’s life that one becomes wise.28

29 (Itakura Shigenori’s will for his son)

A1 E. Freschi (&)

A2 Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna,

A3 Austria

A4 e-mail: [email protected]

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J Indian Philos

DOI 10.1007/s10781-014-9232-9

Journal : 10781 Dispatch : 19-6-2014 Pages : 24

Article No. : 9232 * LE * TYPESET

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30 1 Why do We Need a Study of Textual Reuse at All?

31 (1) Textual-critical reasons:

32 – In order to restore lost or partially lost texts.1

33 – In order to achieve better text editions (e.g., one needs to know whether a

34 quotation embedded in a later text is a reliable witness—this also depends

35 on the general attitude towards the kind of text quoted).236

37 (2) Historical-critical reasons:

38 – In order to gain a better understanding of Indian texts and/within their

39 history (e.g., does the lack of reuse of passages by a certain author in later

40 texts mean that s/he was not influential?).3

41 – In order to better evaluate the relation of Indian authors to other authors

42 (e.g., whom did they quote more frequently? did they feel like naming

43 revered teachers, or did they name only adversaries?).

44 – In order to better understand Indian habits of reading and writing/

45 composing texts (e.g., did Indian authors quote even longer passages

46 literally? did they quote ad sensum? did they have a small library of texts

47 behind their desk?).

1 Ernst Steinkellner, in his pioneer study on the topic of quotations (see infra, section 3.1), writes: “It willbe through careful observation of the many kinds of minute relations between the extant textual materials

that we shall gradually gain some knowledge of the actual process and conditions of the production of

these materials. What purpose does this serve? Beyond its cultural import, its main value is for our

philological work. For it is only if we are able to see how the texts were transmitted and produced and,

specially, which texts were used in producing new ones, that we can base our argument for the

constitution of texts on firm ground and narrow the range for philological and interpretational

arbitrariness. If we can determine for example that a certain text has been found useful and has, therefore,

been referred to, expressedly quoted or silently copied, or has been excerpted or plagiarised, and that parts

of its textual material, i.e. larger textual units, sentences, phrases, words, or—exceptionally—even of its

conceptual materials, have been transmitted to the texts of others by these various processes, these later

texts can then be considered as highly valuable witnesses for a decision on the reality of their source,

should its original be lost” (Steinkellner 1988, p. 105). See also, on reused texts found in commentaries,

Preisendanz (2008, pp. 611–612).2 “But even if it [=the original] is not lost, these derivative textual finds signify an important

supplementation of the extant manuscript-remains. For in view of the fact that one or more possibly

extant codices of a particular original Sanskrit text will originate normally from the last period of Indian

Buddhism—sometimes even as copied under conditions of flight or exile—quotations and other textual

elements derived from it and to be found in other texts whose codices come from the same time must be

considered as most valuable witnesses for the text of the archetype. In many cases these quotations etc.

are the only places where variant readings can be found” (Steinkellner 1988, pp. 105–106). See also, on

reused texts found in commentaries, Preisendanz (2008, p. 611).3 On the same subject, but from the standpoint of Western Ancient and Medieval authors, Ch. Schulze

denies the direct link between number of instances of reuse and the fate of a text: “Fehlende Zitate bei

spateren Schriftstellern konnen mannigfaltige Ursachen haben—fruher Textverlust, Uberstrahlung durch

spatere Autoritaten, Unpassendes fur den eigenen Gedankengang (z.B. weil man einer anderen

Schultradition anhangt als der Vorganger) usw.—und mussen keineswegs einer Abwertung des Autors

und seiner Professionalitat entspringen” (Schulze 2004, p. 21). A less drastic verdict is that of Buchler

et al. (2013), where interesting statistical depictions of literal reuses are produced and a difference in the

literality of reuse among genres is noted.

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48 – In order to better understand the targeted Indian readership or audience

49 (e.g., was acquaintance with older texts presupposed? was this a

50 precondition of understanding a later text?).4

51

52

53 (3) In order to re-frame our historically conditioned notions of “text”, “author”,

54 “originality”, “copyright” and so on.

55 2 State of the Art

56 The study of textual reuse is a largely unexplored field within Indian sastric

57 literature. Apart from a special issue of Religions of South Asia (initiated by a paper

58 of mine (Freschi 2012) and brilliantly edited by J. Suthren Hirst), one has to gather

59 references to this topic in different journals and books, mostly within articles or

60 volumes dedicated to different themes (for instance, in the articles of Petra Kieffer-

61 Pulz).

62 For Steinkellner’s pioneering study, see “Classification of Reuse” section. Like

63 Steinkellner, although with a different focus, Ernst Prets’ project on Fragments of

64 Indian Philosophy (about which see http://nyaya.oeaw.ac.at/cgi-bin/index.pl), the

65 ensued conference (see http://nyaya.oeaw.ac.at/cgi-bin/conf/adv.pl) and its forth-

66 coming proceedings focus on the content of the collected fragments rather than on the

67 form of quoting, and, thus, more on point No. 1 above than on points No. 2 and 3.

68 Noteworthy is also the volume Re-Use in Art and Politics (Hegewald and Mitra

69 2012), which focuses on examples of recycled elements in politics and in the history

70 of art, and more specifically on the political significance of artistic reuses (from the

71 cult of Jagannatha and the sacred artefacts related to it, which have been recycled as

72 part of a specific political agenda of “tribalization” to the many reuses of the image

73 of “Mother India”, in different political contexts).

74 Outside the Indian context, much research has been done on the topic of

75 intertextuality and citations. Within this volume, some bibliographical suggestions

76 about it can be found in the reference list at the end of the present introduction, and in

77 Graheli’s article. Further indications can be found in Trikha’s contribution to the

78 workshop organised by the present research-project and available here: http:/asiatica.

79 wikispaces.com/quotations+and+re-use+of+texts+in+Sanskrit+texts) and in the

80 bibliography of Trikha 2012.5

81 3 Forms of Reuse

82 Broadly, one can point to two possible ways of distinguishing among reuses of

83 former material:

4 For the Tibetan version of these historical-critical reasons, see Hugon’s contribution to the present

volume.5 On the relation of the study of intertextuality and that of textual reuse see also Freschi and Maas

forthcoming b.

The Reuse of Texts in Indian Philosophy

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84 (1) From the point of view of the literality of the reused textual material:

85 – Quotations (the content is the same, the form may be slightly modified).

86 – References (only the content is the same).

87 – Interlanguage (ideas which are broadly common at a certain time and

88 cannot be traced back to a certain author).

89

90

91 (2) From the point of view of the explicitness of the reuse:9293 – Passages acknowledged as having been authored by someone else.

94 – Passages silently embedded in one’s own text.9596 I derive the idea of an “interlanguage” from Marıa de las Nieves Muniz’

97 discussion of an interlingua available to Renaissance to Neoclassical authors in

98 Europe.6 This scholar argues that one cannot always settle whether, e.g., Giacomo

99 Leopardi directly read the author whose ideas he refers to. The same ideas might

100 have well been part of a shared background of commonly agreed notions (for an

101 Indian application of this concept, see Vergiani’s contribution, section 2.3.2). Such

102 an interlanguage, I might add, can also include textual passages whose author(s) is

103 no longer determined, which can be compared to the situation with Western

104 proverbs or antonomasia uses. At the topmost limit of it are collocated

105 laukikanyāyas, stock examples of peculiar cases. The issue of interlanguage has

106 to be held in mind when dating a text on the basis of what one deems to be

107 “unacknowledged quotations”, which may end up being nothing but instances of

108 interlanguage. An interesting example is that of the “quotations” from the Kāśikā109 Vṛtti, which might only be an evidence in favour of a shared approach to grammar

110 (see Vergiani’s contribution) and which should, thus, be used only with extreme

111 caution (see, e.g., Wezler and Motegi’s datation of the Yuktidīpikā on the basis of a

112 single “quotation” of the Kāśikā Vṛtti in their edition of the former text, Wezler and

113 Motegi 1998).

114 A more detailed classification can be found in the contributions by Doctor and by

115 Hugon, who connects the above elements in a unitary scheme, and in Trikha 2012,

116 who takes into account the evaluation of the reused text in the one re-using it. In

117 fact, since many embedded texts may again embed older texts, the presence of, e.g.,

118 a positive evaluation of a Buddhist author in a Jaina text may be evidence for the

119 fact that the sentence is part of a larger passage extracted from a Buddhist source

120 (see Trikha 2012, p. 153 for a similar case in the Jaina Vidyanandin’s

121 Satyaśāsanaparīkṣā). Graheli’s contribution in this collection also throws more

122 light on the role of the author’s evaluation of the passages he reuses, with a specific

123 stress on the epistemological side of this topic.

124 3.1 Classification of Reuse

125 The main differences in the attempts to classify the various cases of textual reuse

126 depend on the purpose one aims at. The first systematic attempt to classify them is

6 Marıa de las Nieves Muniz, “Citazioni implicite e letture illuministe nello Zibaldone”, internationalworkshop Con voce d’altri: scrittura, riflessione, citazione, organized by the Leopardi Centre, University

of Birmingham, in Rome, Sapienza University, 21st May 2010.

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127 Ernst Steinkellner’s one (Steinkellner 1988). Steinkellner principally aimed at

128 reconstructing the texts of Buddhist epistemological authors through other

129 testimonies and not—as is also in our purpose—at analysing the history of a

130 determinate tradition through the angle of textual reuse. Thus, Steinkellner aimed at

131 the evaluation of the witnesses and of their relation to the text to be reconstructed,

132 which he called T.

133 In his pioneer essay and in the work of the scholars following it,7 one finds:

134 ● Ce citatum ex alio, literal quotation of a text in T

135 ● Cee citatum ex alio modo edendi, quotations with minor differences from the

136 text quoted

137 ● Ce’ citatum ex alio usus secondarii, reused passages embedded in a later text

138 without any acknowledgement of their being of foreign origin

139 ● Ce’e citatum ex alio usus secondarii modo edendi140 ● Ci citatum in alio, literal quotation of T in a later text

141 ● Re citatum ex alio modo referendi, where only the content of a certain text is

142 reported in the text one is editing

143 ● P textus parallelus, a text by the same author literally reproducing portions of T.

144 ● P’ textus parallelus usus secondarii145 ● PV textus parallelus variatus, a text by the same author reproducing por-tions of

146 T with variations

147 ● PV’textus parallelus variatus usus secondarii148

149 The distinction between Ce and Cee is arbitrary, at least to some extent, since we

150 do not know which version of a certain text the author under examination had

151 studied, nor is the manuscript tradition always reliable as for small differences.

152 In fact, I am indebted to Helmut Krasser for making me aware of the difficulty in

153 judging the reliability of literal quotations. Due to the paucity of manuscripts and of

154 reliable critical editions, one is often confronted with ambiguous cases. For

155 instance, a divergence between a text of Dharmakırti and the same text quoted in

156 Dharmottara may lead to the following options: (1) Dharmakırti has been inexactly

157 quoted by Dharmottara, or (2) Dharmottara’s text with Dharmakırti’s quotation has

158 been poorly transmitted or edited, or (3) Dharmottara was quoting literally, but

159 Dharmakırti’s text has been poorly transmitted or edited. A similar case is discussed

160 in Pellegrini’s contribution, section II.2.3.8

161 Steinkellner’s original system and his modifications until 2009 did not examine

162 separately the case of reused texts which had been embedded in a later text which

163 was itself quoted or reused by the text one is currently reading (e.g., a quote of the

164 Nyāyasūtra within a passage of the Nyāyabhāṣya quoted by a later Naiyayika). This

165 lack did not represent a flaw for Steinkellner’s purposes, since one would not trust

7 For this and the following abbreviations, see Steinkellner (1988), Lasic (2000b, pp. 25–26), Kellner

(2007, pp. 38–39), Trikha (2012, pp. 130–140).8 An awareness of this problem is highlighted also in Lasic’ introduction to his Vyāpticarcā edition, on

Ce/Cee: “Tatsachlich sagt die Charakterisierug modo edendi oft nicht mehr aus, als daß die zitierte

Passage eine abweichende Form demgegenuber hat, was uns beispielsweise aus den Editionen des

zitierten Textes bekannt ist. Dabei kann nicht mit Sicherheit ausgeschlossen werden, daß Jnanasrimitra

eine andere Version des zitierten Textes vorlag” (Lasic 2000b, p. 25).


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166 much these third-hand reuses while preparing the critical edition of a given text,

167 whereas scholars more exactly focusing on the analysis of textual reuse for its own

168 sake could prefer a specific notation.

169 In accordance to this need, Trikha has introduced the following symbols:

170 ● ⟨Ce⟩ Ce embedded in a larger reused text within T

171 ● ⟨Cee⟩ Cee embedded in a larger reused text within T

172 ● ⟨Ci⟩ literal quotation of T embedded in a larger reused text

173 ● ⟨Re⟩ Re embedded in a larger reused text174175 Steinkellner had hypothetically9 suggested to add to the usus secondarii also an

176 usus tertiarii symbolised with Ce” (or P”) and defined as a Ce’ (or P’) text

177 “secondarily used by yet another author”. This category could overlap with the ⟨Ce⟩178 one, but the steps might be more than three and their number could be difficult to be

179 calculated. In such cases, Trikha’s symbols can be used without fear of being

180 trapped in a too complicated genetic hypothesis. Else, one might wish to follow

181 Lasic’ introduction of a precise number showing the degree of reuse: Ce(1), Ce(2),

182 etc. (with the corresponding Ce(1)e, etc.) (Lasic 2000a, p. 27).

183 At this point one might ask whether it is not more convenient to just drop entirely

184 Steinkellner’s terminology and just use a description of the similarities between the

185 re-using text and the reused one. Krasser (see the PhD thesis he supervised: Mac

186 Allister 2011, p. 11) and Trikha (2012, p. 133) suggest the following symbols:

187 ● = in case of exact correspondence

188 ● ~ in case of loose correspondence

189 ● # in case of correspondence only in content10190191 These symbols have the advantage of avoiding any evaluation of the material and

192 any genetic hypothesis concerning the situation one is confronted with. This sheer

193 description has, in turn, the advantage of non-conditioning the reader with the editor’s

194 judgement about the text’s history. For instance, an exact correspondence may be the

195 result of the processes labelled in Steinkellner’s terminology as Ci or Ce (or Ce’), but196 also of endless intermediate steps of exact reproduction of the same passage.

197 The same reasons, may, however, be used in favour of Steinkellner’s

198 classification, which in many cases enables the reader to better understand the

199 textual history of a given passage (or, at least, to see a plausible reconstruction of it).

200 Thus, in my contribution (see Freschi infra) I have kept using Steinkellner’s

201 terminology hoping to be in this way able to deliver some additional information and,

202 more importantly, to make readers aware of my reconstruction hypothesis. I would

203 nonetheless strongly discourage the use of Steinkellner’s symbols in the case of more

204 complex textual histories, for instance in the case of religious textswhere the direction of

205 borrowing is far less clear (see infra, Debicka-Borek’s discussionof thePancaratra case).

9 “This kind of text [Ce”] as well as no. 10 below [P”] is only differentiated to show further possibilities

of this system. I have, however, no examples for these at the moment” (Steinkellner 1998, p. 117).10 Trikha 2012 uses these and Steinkellner’s symbols side by side.

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206 3.2 Marks of Reuse

207 The lack of literature I mentioned above is even more acute in regard to the

208 technical aspect of textual reuse in Indian philosophical texts. I can only mention

209 Emery R. Boose’s paragraphs on iti, āha and related verba dicendi and adverbs in

210 Tubb and Boose (2007). The book is great in concept, but it is still very basic in its

211 indications (at least in this case).

212 However, in order to be better analysed, the issues sketched above need a

213 thorough investigation in Indian texts, which should keep in sight their historical

214 development within an absolute chronology and a chronology of the development of

215 each philosophical school.

216 When I started working on this project, I asked myself and the other contributors

217 to pay attention to the following points:

218 (1) Whether there is the feeling of the need for literal quotations at all.

219 (2) Whether literal quotations are explicitly marked (at least as a rule) by, e.g., ity220 uktam or similar expressions.

221 (3) Whether references are marked (at least more often than not) by, e.g., iti222 manyate or similar expressions.

223 (4) Whether literal quotations are more often than non-literal ones marked as such

224 (at least by iti) and, if so, whether their source is also mentioned.

225 (5) Which kinds of texts are literally quoted (sacred texts? texts by revered

226 teachers? adversaries’ texts? texts the readership is expected to know and

227 would hence be disturbed to find changed? texts the readership is not expected

228 to know and hence needs to be acquainted with?)?

229 (6) Are iti śruti, iti smṛti, iti prasiddha, iti dṛṣṭa, ity āmnāta and similar indications

230 reliable?231

232 The more technical side of these questions (that is, frequency and number of

233 quotations and their marks) will be better answered through an even greater amount

234 of case studies in as far as possible different fields of Indian philosophy. In this

235 sense, I hope that the present study will initiate a new way of looking at texts and a

236 deeper awareness of the mechanisms of reuse within them. Similarly, forthcoming

237 studies inspired by this approach and preferably based on manuscript sources, (see

238 above, section 3.1 for a caveat about working only on editions) might be able to

239 draw conclusions out of the raw data provided by the next contributions. For

240 instance, I suspect that traditions more closely linked to writing might have

241 developed different habits from ones still ‘suspicious’ about the written form of a

242 text. However, this prejudice is in need for confirmation.11

243 A preliminary study such as the present one, may still throw some light on the

244 general Indian attitude towards quotations and on the particular attitude of a certain

245 school (e.g., Praman˙avada, Navya Nyaya, Prabhakara Mımam

˙sa, etc.) or author. I

246 am inclined to think that some general conclusion can be drawn in this regard, since

11 Together with Catherine Cantwell and Jowita Kramer, I have indeed organised a panel at the 2014

IABS conference on reuse in the specific context of Buddhist literature. The panel (and its proceedings)

will throw light on whether there are some Buddhist specificities in the ways of reusing texts.


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247 my own studies on Mımam˙sa texts show a surprising consistency of results (see

248 infra, Freschi, section 8), and since they do not conform, for instance, with the data

249 derived out of Praman˙avada texts (at least as analysed, for instance, in Steinkellner

250 1988; Lasic 2000b; Kellner 2007).

251 4 Intersections of Authoriality and Textual Reuse in India and in the West

252 4.1 Critical Background

253 One of the main arguments in favour of the study of (geographically or historically)

254 remote texts and cultures is the bewilderment effect one derives from it. In fact,

255 through such comparisons (studying another culture cannot occur without a—

256 conscious or unconscious—comparison, I believe) one is forced to see how the

257 mainstream contemporary Western concept of “copyright” and “intellectual

258 property” is not the only possible way to deal with the topic of ideas and cultural

259 products. In contrast, this approach depends on particular historical circumstances

260 and has, hence, not always and everywhere been the norm.

261 From the time of classical Greece and Rome and possibly until the 17th century

262 and afterwards,12 the use of copies as a homage to the original was common and

263 widespread throughout the West and in India. Painters learnt to paint by copying

264 and reproducing famous paintings, musicians played others’ works or wrote new

265 works using well-established structures, novelists and playwrights translated or re-

266 arranged ancient plots, from the Medea to Jesus’ life, from the Troy war to St.

267 George and the Dragon. Novus was often an abusive word in Latin, and several

268 trends evaluating the role of novelty (as with the poetae novi) indirectly stress how

269 opaque this evaluation seemed.

270 In general: the use of previous models was the rule and the way of quoting/

271 referring to them was relatively loose. Only with the Bible (and a few other

272 foundational texts) did a tradition of literal quoting develop. All other sources were

273 used rather than being reverentially (and literally) copied. Christian Schulze

274 comments, with a dismissive bias, on the editorial work imposed on Dioskurides’

275 Materia Medica as follows:

276277 Zweifellos handelte es sich bei manchem Eingriff in den Dioskuridestext

278 schlicht um Barbarei, die den Text verstummelte. Man hatte mit diesen

279 Abanderungen die Ehrfurcht vor dem Ursprungstext und ihrem Verfasser uber

280 Bord geworfen: Wahrend Hippokrates fur Galen oft eine sakrosante Bedeu-

281 tung hatte oder—um einen anderen Bereich zu nennen—Origenes auf

282 aufwendigste Weise versuchte, einen moglichen originalen Bibeltext herzust-

283 ellen (um ihn erst dann zu kommentieren), existierten Bedenken

284 vergleichbarer Art bei pharmazeutischen Texten nicht. Selbst der große

12 On copying in Grammars and Dictionaries until the end of the 18th century, see Tieken-Boon van

Ostade (1996). Among the many cases of reuse of form and plot within contemporary fiction, see that of

Kathy Acker, discussed in Cao (2012).

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285 Dioskurides war davon nicht ausgenommen (Schulze 2004, p. 31, emphasis

286 added).

287 By the way, even the custom of literally quoting biblical passages does not mean

288 that the Bible was not forced into one’s agenda. On the contrary, literal quoting was

289 often employed in order to violate the contextual meaning and to impose a new

290 one.13

291 A different case is that of China, where the tradition of copying is also very

292 ancient (and still current nowadays). In this case, however, copies were absolutely

293 true to their original. Manuscripts were faithfully reproduced and—unlike in India—

294 neither emended nor improved by copyists.14

295 Lest it is thought that I am here understanding the switch from an “open, usable

296 text” paradigm to a closed text paradigm as a linear and mono-directional process,

297 the reader should remember that a philology based on historical principles was

298 already developed in Alexandrine times and then replaced by the un-historical

299 attitude towards texts in the Middle Ages. The suggestive incipit of Mulke’s Der300 Autor und sein Text reminds one of these contradictory tendencies as follows:

301302 Die Geschichte der Weltliteratur ist auch eine Geschichte der Verfalschungen.

303 Von den Anfangen bis in die Gegenwart sind Werke gerade vielgelesener

304 Autoren nach ihrer Veroffentlichung von fremder Hand verandert worden. Um

305 nur einige Beispiele aus der Antike zu nennen: Die homerischen Epen las man

306 im dritten Jahrhundert vor Christus in so entstellter Form, daß sich aus der

307 Erkenntnis der text- und echtheitskritischen Anstoße und dem Versuch, diese

308 systematisch zu beseitigen, die alexandrinische Philologie entwickelte. Die

309 Texte der attischen Tragodie sind bis heute durch Storungen beeintrachtigt, die

310 offenbar auf Eingriffe sowohl der Theaterschauspieler als auch spaterer

311 Bearbeiter zuruckgehen. Die plautinischen Komodien wurden ebenso wie

312 spater die Satiren Iuvenals durch fremde Zusatze verandert. Schon die antike

313 Kommentare bezeugen unechtes Versgut in der Aeneis Vergils. Auch die

314 großen christlichen Dichter Iuvencus, Prudentius und Paulinus von Nola

315 blieben davon nicht verschont. Und im vierten Jahrhundert nach Christus

316 veranlaßte die Verwilderung des lateinischen Bibeltexts Papst Damasus und

317 Hieronymus, eine neue, kritisches Anspruchen genugende Ubersetzung aus

318 dem Hebraischen und Griechischen zu besorgen.15

13 For an interesting case of this extensive use of literal meaning, see Nikolsky (2010, p. 246).14 I am grateful to Filippo Salviati for having discussed with me the Chinese case and, in particular, the

way copyists of the Lanting Xu included even erasures etc. while copying the original manuscript. Images

of the extant copies are easily available on the web. See also infra, Appendix.15 Mulke (2008, p. 11). Mulke’s text is inspiring and thought-provoking. The concluding remarks of his

study acknowledge a tension between authors, who beg that their works are not “employed”, emended,

epitomised, etc., and the actual usage—even of these same authors as soon as others’ works were at stake.

Mulke also suggests we rethink the concept of authorship, since the first element of this tension proves

that—against what one could think by considering only the case of India—the reason for this openness of

texts was not the lack of an individual author.


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319 4.2 Modes of Production of Texts: From the Copyist to the Plagiarist

320 Instances of reuse are copious in both written and oral texts. Formulae are also a sort

321 of “reuse”, although they lack (the memory of) an author. Moreover, until the

322 invention of print, in many places “the physical act which produced originals was

323 the same as that which produced copies. Writers were responsible for both” (Burrow

324 1982, p. 31). Hence, they were often used to both copying and actively writing, and

325 used the first ability within the second.

326 Again, Burrow quotes a famous passage of St. Bonaventure (13th c.) about the

327 modus faciendi librum (“the way of making a book”):

328329 There are four ways of making a book. Sometimes a man writes others’ words,

330 adding nothing and changing nothing, and he is simply called a scribe

331 [scriptor]. Sometimes a man writes others’ words, putting together passages

332 which are not his own; and he is called a compiler [compilator]. Sometimes a

333 man writes both others’ words and his own, but with the others’ words in

334 prime place and his own added only for purposes of clarification; and he is

335 called not an author but a commentator [commentator]. Sometimes a man

336 writes both his own words and others’, but with his own in prime place and

337 others’ added only for purposes of confirmation; and he should be called an

338 author [auctor].16

339 So, no one just writes without any model: “The scheme simply does not allow for

340 that possibility” (Burrow 1982, p. 31). Moreover, how reliable is Bonaventure’s

341 description of the scriptor? In fact, scribes did not “change nothing”. On the contrary,342 the scribe added and changed “not only inadvertently, like the compositor, but also

343 deliberately. He replaces obscure expressions with more familiar ones, omits and

344 rewrites passages, and sometimes adds passages from other sources or even passages

345 of his own composition” (Burrow 1982, pp. 31–32). At least in India, the case I am

346 more acquainted with, a copyist may act this way in order to alter the text, but, more

347 often, in order to improve it or to better preserve it (hence, explanations may be added

348 whenever a passage seems too obscure to be understood). Hence, the copyist does not

349 perceive himself/herself as someone who is violating the text, but rather as its

350 protector. Was Bonaventure unaware of that? My own answer is that he did not

351 perceive such editorial changes as “changes”. The only changes worth mentioning

352 were the ones made by a compiler, all others were just part of the process of copying.

353 Nowadays, we are still used to the idea that editors working for a publisher are

354 allowed to re-write the form of a proposed text and to re-arrange its content, and yet

355 they are not mentioned as co-authors.

356 The co-existence of copying and “creative” writing within one’s daily routine also

357 applies to our most recent past: before the widespread use of photocopies, scanners,

358 cameras, etc., one was forced to physically copy a text one was interested in. Hence,

359 one would have thousands of sheets or notebooks with quotations, perhaps not always

360 formally identified as such, many of which were meant to be reused in successive

16 St. Bonaventure, fourth quaestio in the Proem to his commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences,quoted in Burrow (1982, pp. 30–31).

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361 works. A notorious instance is Giacomo Leopardi’s Zibaldone, where the author

362 copied others’ texts side by side with his own notes (the whole book is now considered

363 one of Leopardi’s masterpieces).17 On the contiguity of “creative writing” and

364 “copying” see also Del Toso’s contribution within this collection, section 1.1.4 (e).

365 On the contrary, technical facilities enable the possibility of an exact

366 reproduction and, hence, careless reproductions have now become the exception

367 rather than the rule and are seen as a flaw to be censured. Similarly, the economic

368 interests connected with the idea of a copyright (the development of a class of

369 professional authors, the career advantages linked with the number of original

370 publications one has authored, etc.) have heavily contributed to the custom of literal

371 quotations and to the construct of the flaw of “copying”. As explained by Ingrid

372 Tieken-Boon van Ostade, all authors of English Grammars and Dictionaries

373 regularly copied from the work of their predecessors and improved on it.18 It is only

374 in the 18th century, however, that the social appreciation of this changes:

375376 The desire to make money quickly and by any available means, including

377 theft, seems to be important in distinguishing plagiarism from what has come

378 to be referred to as unacknowledged copying. According to Lafollette, “Once

379 ‘authorship’ began to carry the potential for profit, then plagiarism became a

380 matter of concern to all authors and publishers” (1992, p. 14).19

381 Accordingly, Tieken-Boon van Ostade explains how the very word “plagiary” found

382 its way into English in the 17th century, but gradually changed its meaning from

383 “kidnapper” to “book stealer” (mid-18th century) (Tieken-Boon van Ostade 1996,

384 p. 86). Presently, some author, such asKathyAcker, have expressed their criticism of the

385 capitalist mode of production exactly by “plagiarising” Classical texts (see Cao 2012),

386 whereas several political parties claim that there should be “no copyright on ideas”, and,

387 consequently, on intellectual works (see Bartels 2009, especially chapter 1.1).

388 Will the present concept of a “closed” text always be the case? Perhaps not.

389 Apart from the competing models (such as the Chinese one), the habit of “wikiing”

390 also points (back) to an open-text future. Future writers may feel indifferent towards

391 the concept of intellectual property and decide to compose future encyclopedias by

392 just compiling existing texts. They might even decide they do not care so much for

393 their names to be remembered and/or sign just by their first names, like many

394 Middle Age “artists” and “authors”.

395 4.2.1 Forms of Production of Texts: Does Orality Play a Role?

396 At first sight, one might suggest that quotations may have to do with the written

397 form of a text. In a culture which does not know any written record, a text exists

17 I am grateful to Franco D’Intino for having discussed this instance with me.18 About Lindley Murray she says that “Murray’s main line of approach seems to have been to present

the material he found in his sources in a more lucid and coherent sense”, Tieken-Boon Van Ostade (1996,

p. 89).19 Tieken-Boon van Ostade (1996, p. 85). I. Tieken-Boon Van Ostande also kindly informs me that Ann

Fisher, when she accused someone of having “borrowed” bits and pieces from her grammar, claimed he

was “stealing the bread out of my mouth”.


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398 only when, and insofar as, it is performed. This may legitimate the performer’s

399 action over the text. In other words, while performing a text which only exists in her

400 head, one may feel natural to intervene on the text s/he is performing, much more so

401 than if s/he were performing a text fixed in a written form. This is not the case if the

402 performer executes a well-known passage, e.g., of a ritual text, since in this case

403 (part of) the audience could censure her deviations.

404 However, the link between orality and openness is not fix. Apart from the case of

405 the Vedic texts, which are memorised in a way meant to preserve all their features,20

406 other examples show that fixedness, openness and orality and writing can be

407 variously combined. For instance, in the case of Somali poetry, Martin Orwin

408 explains that Somali maanso poetry knows definitive texts independently of writing

409 and of Western influences.21Maanso poetry is one of the two main divisions of

410 Somali poetry (the other being hees, which includes most of all working songs,

411 children songs and other songs performed while doing something else, see Orwin

412 2005, p. 286). It is a (politically or socially) engaged poetry, alliterative and with a

413 distinct metrical scheme. More interestingly for the aim of this book, it displays:

414 ● A strong concept of authorship (claiming a line as one’s own when it is not

415 entails the risk of being ridiculised and attacked, see Orwin 2005, p. 288).

416 ● A strong concept of text as a definitive entity (in principle, no additions or

417 deletions—not even by the author, it seems— are admitted, although human

418 memory is frail and occasional alterations have been observed, see Orwin 2005,

419 pp. 287–288).420421 How did writing (Somali has first been written in an official script in 1972, but “a

422 number of people, both Somalis and non-Somalis, had used writing prior to this

423 time”, Orwin 2005, p. 293) affect this reality? Hardly at all, explains Orwin.

424 Poets have kept on composing and performing definitive texts as before.

425 Listeners have kept on thinking of definitive texts in the same way. Thus, the

426 concept of strong authorship and of definitive text is:

427 ● Not an exclusively Western concept (“I wish to show that I am not dealing with

428 a conception based on the written word and imposed upon the material by a

429 Western academic but with a concept intrinsic to the Somali conception of

430 maanso”, Orwin 2005, p. 279).

431 ● Not linked with writing (Orwin quotes Said Sheikh Samatar speaking of “an

432 unwritten copyright law, no less strict than those observed in literary societies”,

433 Said 1982, p. 64)

434 ● Not incompatible with the oral performance of poetical texts.435

20 Colas accordingly states that “orality is of multiple types” (“l’oralite est multiple”), distinguishing

Vedic orality—comparable to a mental writing—from epic orality, which favors interpolations and

transformations (Colas 2012, p. 30).21 I am grateful to Giorgio Banti who made me aware of the case of Somali poetry and gave me a copy of

Orwin’s article.

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436 In sum, writing does not automatically fix a text, just like performing it orally

437 does not imply that the text is an open one. As shown above, the definitive aspect of438 a written form has not always and everywhere been felt as such.

439 However, writing may interfere with the literality of quotations, though only

440 indirectly, insofar as: (1) cursive kinds of writing and print allow a wider circulation

441 of the text to non-insiders, and, hence, a control by the audience; (2) writing allows

442 only a limited space to glosses, interpolations and addenda (adding an extra folio is

443 not always possible and is anyway more expensive than adding a few strophes in a

444 poem one knows by heart); (3) writing means reflecting on what belongs to the text

445 and what does not, and may have influenced the processes of fixation of “Canons”.22

446 4.3 Implicit auctoritas or Explicit auctoritates?

447 Quoting, extensively quoting from an earlier text may mean that one is aware that

448 everything worth saying has already been said. This is consistent with the Indian

449 idea of cyclical time or of a time without beginning. In both cases, all possibilities

450 have already been considered. One can only add new forms to well-established

451 contents, as proposed by Bhat˙t˙a Jayanta in the prologue of his Nyāyamañjarī

452 (reproduced and discussed in Graheli’s contribution, section 4), by Abhinavagupta

453 at the beginning of his Abhinavabhāratī (see Graheli 2008) or by Venkat˙anatha (also

454 known as Vedanta Desika) in the maṅgala of his Yādavābhyudayakāvya.455 Better, this habit may become itself part of the intellectual etiquette. Authors

456 such as Jayanta do much more than they avow and many thinkers conceal

457 innovations in old forms. In the West, one is led to think of Aquinas, who has been

458 (rightly) accused of “innovation” in his interpretation of some Aristotelian loci, but459 who refrains from saying where in the Summa Theologica he is expressing his own

460 opinion. Similarly, Patanjali’s Mahābhāṣya is often still enigmatic for today’s

461 researchers, since it is hard to distinguish between Patanjali’s own ideas and what he

462 brings in from previous thinkers.

463 More generally, in India, just like in the Western Middle Ages, claiming to say

464 something new would have diminished the authority of one’s statements. As stated

465 by Karin Preisendanz,

466467 [I]nnovation proceeded in the guise of elucidation—understood as interpre-

468 tation in the broadest sense—and of defense, within an intellectual community

469 which would probably not have sanctioned immediate modification of the

470 teachings of basic works within one’s own respective tradition, not to mention

471 outright challenge or even dismissal of them with subsequent innovation. […]

472 This explains why, in general, no express claim is made to intellectual

473 originality or innovation on the part of individual classical and medieval

474 thinkers: before the early modern period it is rather explicitly denied by some

475 (Preisendanz 2008, pp. 606, 607–608).

22 It might be interesting to note that this is a post hoc process. Writing and even more printing do not in

themselves cause a standardisation of orthography, canons, etc., but they allow a greater circulation of

texts and enable their comparison. This, in turn, may prompt people to initiate a standardisation process.


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476 One encounters authors proud of their individual contribution only after the First

477 Millennium AD, and their number increases after the 15th century. Lawrence

478 McCrea has, for instance, dedicated many insightful pages to the attitude of pre-

479 colonial Mımam˙sakas who overtly challenged their school’s theses (see McCrea

480 2002 and 2008).

481 Before that, and side by side with that, the implicit assumption reigned that

482 authority had to do with the auctoritas, and, consequently, with the auctores one

483 was quoting from.

484 In order to add authority to one’s text, hence, one needed to quote from

485 authoritative works. Did one also need to name the authorities one was quoting

486 from? Yes, insofar as the author’s name (or reference to his/her name) stressed his

487 or her authority. However, in cases of very well known authors and texts, such as

488 the Bible or Peter Lombard’s Sentences, the reference could also be quite causal and

489 imprecise. The audience would have been able to collocate the quote immediately.

490 The answer is even more ambiguous in the Indian sastric tradition. In fact, one

491 notices cases where an authority is explicitly named in order to add authority to

492 one’s text. For instance, Madhva used quotes from specific Sacred Texts, often

493 unknown ones—or perhaps even made-up ones23—in order to confirm his most

494 innovative conclusions.

495 On the other hand, within a philosophical school, borrowing from one’s

496 predecessors was licit and one did not care about naming one’s source (see Trikha

497 2012, and Freschi’s and Graheli’s contributions to the present volume). This might

498 be due to the fact that the individual author felt himself as part of the tradition and

499 hence, as its legitimate heir, could use everything belonging to it. Else, it is also

500 possible that the audience immediately recognised such implicit quotes of former,

501 authoritative texts, once embedded in a later text. It is worth remembering, in this

502 context, that listeners and readers in classical India were limited to the cultured elite.

503 Authors did not need to address the requirements of a lay reader. Moreover, many

504 important texts of one’s school or of general significance were learnt by heart and,

505 thus, many quotations were easily recognised by competent readers/listeners.24

506 I dare not say that every single quote could be identified and correctly attributed

507 to its author, rather that the listener could at least recognise it as part of the school’s

508 lore and, hence, as authoritative and correct.

509 The situation dramatically changed in India only with the advent of print, which

510 allows uncontrolled distribution to all sorts of readers.25 Similarly, it is not until the

511 16th c. that a relatively uniform typographical way to mark quotations started to

23 On this controversy, see the data collected in Mesquita 2000 and Mesquita 2008 and the overview of

the literature against or in favour of Mesquita’s thesis in Okita 2011. See also infra, section 4.4.24 I thank Evgeniya Desnitskaya for having discussed this point with me. Desnitskaya maintains that:

“However, with the course of time, this way of dealing with quotations became untypical. Later on,

quotations in texts were usually attributed. This could be due to the decline of mnemonic techniques as

well as to the fact that the texts became more and more complicated and thus it was impossible to

memorize them” (on this last point, see infra, section 5). The increasing number of non-memorized texts

is indeed very much a factor to be taken into account.25 I am grateful to Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad for having discussed this point with me.

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512 evolve in the West,26 and even today double quotes are still ambiguous, since they

513 are used not only for quotations, and since they may mark not only verbatim but also

514 ad sensum quotations (notably, in newspapers).27

515 4.4 Sacrum Furtum or Plagiarism?

516 In order for a theft to be one, the thief needs to know s/he is taking something which

517 does not belong to him/her. Even in the case of intellectual theft, the problem

518 remains: did Indian and Western post-classical and pre-modern authors know they

519 were “stealing” someone other’s ideas?

520 On the one hand, much points to the conclusion that no theft was meant to be

521 carried out (hence, no “theft” occurred—apart from what we consider to be theft).

522 Ancient and Medieval authors used their predecessors’ works as if they were their

523 own. Previous texts and sentences were raw, reusable, materials like the old pillars

524 used in order to build a new church. No one felt a precise interruption within the

525 living tradition starting with the sūtras and going on until one’s own lifetime.

526 Hence, these authors may be accused of a lack of appreciation of the historical

527 depth, not of plagiarism.

528 On the other hand, as already hinted at in section 4.3, the situation changes

529 slowly and unevenly from the first centuries of the Second Millennium AD onwards.

530 Preisendanz (2005), McCrea (2008) and other researchers in the Sanskrit

531 Knowledge Systems group enquiring on pre-colonial Sanskrit texts have, for

532 instance, shown an increasing appreciation of historical depth and distance from the

533 foundational texts of one’s school. A similar, significant evidence of a shift of

534 attitude is that of the Madhva-Venkat˙anatha polemics (discussed in Mesquita 2000,

535 see also fn. 23). Someone, perhaps Madhva, has been censured by Venkat˙anatha

536 because of faking authorities. If this accusation is true, then one could say that his

537 recipient did not feel close enough to the texts as to be allowed to interpret them

538 freely, and rather felt the need to forge new ones. If it does not hold, it nonetheless

539 shows that forgery was felt as a major offence.

26 On the history and evolution of quotation marks, see the illuminating and rich Finnegan (2011, chap. 4).

Finnegan starts by comparing samples (in books dated between 1526 and 1885) of the same Biblical

passage and noting that “the striking thing is that in earlier years neither the inverted commas of

contemporary English-language texts nor their more angular continental equivalents apparently played

their now-familiar role in marking quotation. Whether in the manuscript tradition of Christian and pre-

Christian authors or in early printed books, quotation marks in the form we know them now were absent”

(Finnegan 2011, p. 86). Finnegan then identifies the origin of the idea of typographically marking

quotations in the diplē, a “graphic sign used by Greek editors to draw attention to something noteworthy in

the text”, found already in “early Greek manuscripts” (Finnegan 2011, p. 86) (unfortunately, no date is

given, but themention of papyri and the hint at the fact that a development took place “in the second century

BC” means that the evidence of this graphic sign can go back to the IV–III century BC). My attention has

been driven to Finnegan by the well-documented Theophanidis (2012), which includes beautiful images of

16th century usages of quotation marks and lists further relevant literature.27 On the multiple usages of quotations, see Finnegan (2011, chap. 4.2), for the history of what quotation

marks should do, and Finnegan (2011, pp. 43–55), where inconsistencies in written samples and in self-

descriptions of one’s usage are discussed. More in general, Finnegan notes that “The concept of

‘exactness’ is in any case a relative one, working differently in different settings”, so that in such different

settings the same sentence will or will not be put within quotation marks (Finnegan 2011, p. 103).


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540 The Buddhist case might seem more limited by the fact that Buddhism had a

541 historical founder and, hence, a Canon. Nonetheless, this Canon grew up and

542 changed century after century, so much that there are several Canons quite different

543 from each other, and several Buddhist schools disagreed as for its composition, thus

544 generating discussions which throw interesting light on the way their authors felt

545 about open and closed texts.28

546 4.5 Reuse and Originality

547 Apart from the points already mentioned, the amount of textual reuse may also be a

548 useful device to understand an author’s compositional habits and his/her “original-

549 ity”. This concept is in bad need for a definition within Indian standards. In fact,

550 Indian authors may rather be flawed because of plagiarism and are all by and large

551 non-original. Contemporary scholars often look for monographs within Indian sastra

552 literature in vain, and find commentaries and commentaries on commentaries

553 instead, or at most half-commentaries (such as Jayanta’s Nyāyamañjarī, which

554 comments only on a selection of Nyāyasūtras).555 But, looking at the way one builds texts through quotations and departing from556 quotations, one eventually understands that an Indian author’s skill (and “original-

557 ity”) can be recognised indeed in his/her apt arrangement of them. Similarly, I.

558 Tieken-Boon van Ostade writes about Lindley Murray’s Grammar:

559560 Despite the taint of plagiarism which his working method undeniably has,

561 Murray nevertheless deserves credit for a certain amount of originality in his

562 work. Among other things […] this originality lies in the way in which he

563 handled his sources, producing a better product as a result (Tieken-Boon van

564 Ostade 1996, p. 91).

565 I shall argue in my own contribution (Freschi, infra) that this is the case in

566 Ramanujacarya’s Tantrarahasya, which is sometimes slightly more than a

567 patchwork of former quotations. Still, Ramanujacarya manages to collect quotations

568 on the same theme from different works, to put them face to face and to make them,

569 in some selected cases, crash. Similarly, Himal Trikha notes how Vidyanandin

570 reuses several passages (ranging from acknowledged quotations to loose references)

571 but the structure of the text is his and independent of them. They are—in Trikha’s

572 terminology—Bausteine (building blocks) of his text. This is also proved by the fact

573 that arguments are not quoted en bloc, but rather piecemeal (Trikha 2012, p. 150).

574 Discussing the case of “creative” commentaries, K. Preisendanz makes a similar

575 point:

576577 [B]ecause of the dominant cultural concept of the timeless authority of

578 foundational works, philosophers felt obliged to present new materials in the

28 For a short introduction to the problem of canonisation in Buddhism, see Lancaster (2005). More

specific studies are Mizuno (1982) (which I could not access) and Collins (1990). The latter discusses the

concept of open and closed canon (thus showing that “Canon” does not imply closedness) and then the

evolution and historicity of one of this canons, the Pali one, which is often regarded as the earliest one (bycontemporary scholars) or as the original one (by Theravadins).

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579 form of commentaries, but could at the same time use the authority of the

580 basic text as a vehicle for the establishment of their own ideas or even their

581 own innovative tradition. Radhakrishnan speaks of “conservative liberalism”,

582 in the form of importation of the new into the old […]. Strauss (1925, p. 229)

583 draws attention to the extreme case of the commentaries on the Brahmasūtra584 by Sankara and Ramanuja, Nimbarka and Vallabha, which introduce a new

585 tradition in the guise of a commentary (Preisendanz 2008, p. 608).

586 Unluckily enough, most Indian authors do not write a “foreword” to their works,

587 explaining how they started working on them. But one might imagine something

588 like the process described by Layamon, a Middle English author writing about 1200.

589 In his prologue, he says that “he took three books, laid them out before him, and

590 turned their pages. Then:

591592 He took feathers in his fingers and applied them to book-skin and set down

593 together the truer words and compressed those three books into one.29

594 Last, Iwould like to point to the fact that reusing a textualmaterial implies repeating it

595 in a new context and, thus, opening both the reused text and the new context to new

596 potentialities. The dialectic of conservatism and innovation thus implied in each

597 instance of textual reuse can have surprisingly original results and open completely new

598 perspectives, like for instance in Derrida’s deconstruction. The fact that contemporary

599 authors and scholars have been intellectually influenced by the Romantic myth of the

600 genius should not make us forget the “creative potential” of textual reuse:

601602 Citation conjures something new into the world by deconstructing the

603 intelligibility and legibility of the social forms that it reanimates, introducing

604 an alterity through repetition. […] [T]he citation is always not quite. And by

605 being not quite, the citation provides an opening to new possibilities for being

606 in the world (Nakassis 2013, pp. 71, 76).

607 4.5.1 Use, Misuse and Peruse of Texts

608 Now, I shall contemplate an idea, namely, that—against general expectations—

609 textual reuse often tells us more than an “original” text about the intention of its

610 author (see De Simini, end of the first section).

611 If someone has something to say, s/he will probably just say it. Why does s/he,

612 instead of it or on top of that, reuse someone else’s text?

613 (1) In order to add authority to his/her statement (since X said it, it must be true)

614 (see Freschi, Hugon, Kieffer-Pulz, Vergiani).

615 (2) In order to elaborate on a preceding and well-known text:

616 ● Because X has already said something very significant on that subject and

617 one finds it convenient to just reuse the same text (see Freschi, Graheli,

29 Fethereh he nom mid fingren, ond fiede on boc-felle, / Ond tha sothere word sette to-gadere, / Ond thathre boc thrumde to are (Brut, Caligula version, 26–28). The whole passage is quoted in Burrow (1982, p.

29).


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618 Hugon, Kieffer-Pulz). The reused text might be chosen because it is the

619 standard one in one’s school and/or because it can be easily memorised, it

620 is compact and well-written.


622 one cannot ignore it (see Kieffer-Pulz, Ruiz-Falques).


624 one wants to silently improve on it.

625 (3) In order to present an objection (see Freschi, Graheli, Hugon).

626 Examples of the first case are quite common; within the present volume, one is

627 lead to think at the use of Dharmakırti’s name and words among Tibetan

628 epistemologists (see Hugon, section II.1.A.a). The situation described in the first

629 sub-type of the second case occurs frequently with the texts of one’s own school

630 (see below, section 5). The second sub-type of the second case is possibly the one of

631 previous grammarians whose views one does not share, but which one cannot but

632 refer to (see Ruiz-Falques’ article and especially its conclusions).

633 The third sub-type of the second case might also be very promising. If an author

634 quotes a passage and then interprets it in a forced way, this might mean that s/he had

635 to quote it (for instance, because it was the standard text on that particular theme),

636 and hence needed to force its interpretation into his/her own in order to legitimate it

637 (on this topic see Vergiani’s contribution, especially section 3, and Debicka-Borek’s

638 contribution).

639 An instance from the school I am more familiar with, i.e., Mımam˙sa:

640 Sabara opens his discussion on the principles of tantra and prasaṅga with a verse

641 which—he says—is used as an illustration (udāhṛ-). The verse is immediately

642 followed by Sabara’s own reading of it, by a metaphorical illustration and by a short

643 definition by Sabara himself. It is interesting to observe that neither the verse nor the

644 metaphorical illustrations fit comfortably in Sabara’s own definition of prasaṅga (as

645 shown in Freschi and Pontillo 2013). Bronkhorst (1986) went so far as to state that

646 Sabara’s interpretation of the verse misconstrues it.30 But why did he, then, use the

647 verse and the metaphors? I think that Sabara had to mention the verse and the

648 metaphors, because they were already well-known and each student would have

649 immediately thought of them. However, Sabara then domesticates them into his own

650 view. In this way, he conveys the idea that his innovation was already common sense

651 among Mımam˙sakas.

652 5 Some Preliminary Results

653 During the research which led to the following studies, the other authors and I have

654 noticed that some elements are not indicative:655

30 “It is not clear why Sabara misinterpreted the verse the way he did […] One gets the impression that

Sabara himself was not very clear about the precise meaning he wanted to assign to the two terms”

(Bronkhorst 1986, p. 80).

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656 ● āh- and similar verbs do not necessarily introduce a literal quotation31

657 ● iti can be used to indicate the end of a quoted passage, but also at the end of a

658 direct speech, of an objection or of an argument

659 ● °vacana can be used for both one’s authorities and one’s opponents (as

660 explained by Himal Trikha during the workshop organised by the present

661 research-project, see above, section 2, and then in Trikha forthcoming)

662 ● literality is not the norm; although literal quotations might seem to weigh more

663 (see on this regard fn. 49 in Hugon’s II.1.A.a; De Simini, section 3, and Graheli),

664 they are by no means the rule, even when one wants to add authority to one’s

665 statements666

667 Notwithstanding that, as a general tendency, just as we can say that ucyate by rule668 introduces a siddhānta, similarly,

669 ● In the majority of cases, authors or texts, if at all identified, are identified with

670 epithets (vārttikakāra, bhāṣyakāra…) (see Freschi, Graheli, Kieffer-Pulz)

671 ● Quotations of sūtras and metrical passages tend to be closer to the original than

672 quotations of non-metrical texts, this is even more so in the case of Pan˙ini’s

673 Aṣṭādhyāyī (see Freschi, Graheli, Hugon, Pellegrini, Vergiani)

674 ● tad uktam, uktaṃ hi, uktaṃ ca, ity uktam and similar formulas tend to be used to

675 introduce acknowledged textual reuse; moreover they often introduce literal

676 quotations (see Andrijanic, Graheli, Kieffer-Pulz, Ruiz-Falques, Vergiani)

677 ● Acknowledging textual reuse, especially by naming the author, can be used by

678 authors in order to add authority to a statement (see Hugon), and, thus, while

679 taking a difficult move or while explaining a position which is not obviously

680 shared by the members of one’s own school (cf. also Mesquita 2000 concerning

681 when and why Madhva introduced a quotation)

682 ● However, mentioning the name of one’s source may also mean that the author is

683 distancing himself from it and considers it not part of his own school (see

684 Freschi); such instances may be easily identified by the presence of adverbs such

685 as pana (Skt punaḥ) (see Kieffer-Pulz, Ruiz-Falques)32

686 ● Postclassical authors tend to acknowledge textual reuse and to name their

687 sources more often than their forerunners (see Andrijanic, Doctor, Kieffer-Pulz)

688 ● Connected with the above point: the competence of the readership/audience of a

689 text influences the style of reuse

31 Steinkellner discusses how he had to restrict the scope of Ce/Re, in the case of nonextant texts, to a

purely formal distinction “in consideration of, e.g., the following circumstances. On the one hand, the

occurrence of āha introducing what is only a summarising report of a passage in Paks˙ilasvamin’s

Nyāyabhāṣya (PST˙1.99,12–16) does not allow us to generalise the definition of Ce introduced above in

the sense that all such passages would have to consist of more (Ce) or less (Cee) literal citations”

(Steinkellner et al. 2005, p. liv).32 Some sort of intermediate position is analysed by Graheli, who notes that Jayanta may reuse without

any acknowledgement the Nyāyabhāṣya (a text of his own school), while he names adversaries with

whom he agrees (Sabara and Kumarila) and does not name at all adversaries with whom he overtly

dissents (Bhartr˙hari).


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690 ● Unacknowledged textual reuse (“repeats” in Hugon’s terminology) are the rule

691 within the textual material of one’s own school and rather exceptional outside of

692 it (see De Simini, Freschi, Graheli, Hugon, Kieffer-Pulz)693694 Kieffer-Pulz’ article in this volume includes interesting conclusions about the

695 marks of reuse in Pali texts. In fact, Kieffer-Pulz’ article lays down for Pali what I

696 would have liked to achieve for Sanskrit with the present volume. The Sanskrit

697 landscape has proven itself too heterogeneous to make such an overview possible,

698 but it is to be hoped that further studies will integrate these short notes.

699 6 Some Further Explanations on this Volume’s Essays

700 The general focus of this volume is on the study of textual reuse in philosophical

701 texts. During my first call for papers, I have especially highlighted the need for a

702 technical analysis of data, with case studies of the usage of verba dicendi etc., within

703 philosophical texts. This kind of concern is particularly evident in Doctor, Freschi,

704 Graheli, Hugon, Kieffer-Pulz, Neri, Ruiz-Falques and Vergiani, whose relevance for

705 the topic of this volume will, thus, be immediately clear. A few more words might

706 be necessary for some of the other articles.

707 In fact, while working on the topic of textual reuse I have also felt the need to

708 open up the topic in order to gain further insight into the wider Indian background

709 and to compare it with the specific case of philosophical texts.

710 In this sense, Elena Mucciarelli’s paper focusses on the early history of textual

711 reuse in the Vedic Sam˙hitas. It is, therefore, even more interesting to recognise

712 patterns of reuse (e.g., modified textual units as a result of their adaptation to a new

713 context) which are observed also in later contexts.

714 Ewa Debicka-Borek’s paper is an interesting example of how telling the reuse of

715 a text may be. In fact, after analysing the general habit of textual reuse in the

716 Pancaratra tradition, it discusses in detail a seeming exception, i.e. the

717 Narasim˙hadıks

˙a. An (oral or written) text describing it had been introduced in the

718 Satvata Sam˙hita, where the compiler of the Sam

˙hita clearly tried to make the text

719 look more “orthodox” by introducing it as a subsidiary to the initiation rite. The later

720 compiler of the Isvara Sam˙hita, though reusing most of the Satvata Sam

˙hita

721 material, omits the Narasim˙hadıks

˙a, possibly because he thought that its hetero-

722 geneity could not be suitably concealed, not even through a proper context. Thus,

723 the choices made while reusing are an interesting key to understanding the

724 motivations of (authors and) compilers.

725 Florinda De Simini’s paper nicely shows how reusing can be an authorial activity

726 through the case of the Dharmanibandhas, which are often no more than jigsaws of

727 quotations, but where it is exactly the choice of the authorities to be quoted which is

728 highly informative.

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729 Cristina Bignami’s paper, shows how the categories discussed in this introduction

730 can be used also in the field of art history, thus opening a promising field for further

731 investigations.33

732 Moreover, although most papers focus on the analysis of textual reuse as a powerful

733 tool for reconstructing the intellectual history of Indian thought, some of them focus also

734 on its applications. Ivan Andrijanic’ essay shows how a careful study of the approach to

735 reused passages can be helpful in recovering a text preserved only in fragments.

736 Krishna Del Toso’s contribution shows how the analysis of the quoted materials, of

737 their position in the text and of their sequencemayhelp us reconstruct thehistory of a text.

738 Malhar Kulkarni’s paper analyses some quotations of Pan˙ini in the Kāśikā Vṛtti

739 and discusses their variations compared to the transmitted wording of Pan˙ini’s

740 Aṣṭādhyāyī, thus showing how the historical study of textual reuse can fruitfully

741 interact with manuscript analysis.

742 Gianni Pellegrini’s paper aims at reconstructing the intellectual landscape ofNorth-

743 East India in the 16th c. through the texts reused by one of its protagonists,

744 Madhusudana Sarasvatı. On a similar level but with the additional feature of dealing

745 with two worlds at once (i.e., Sanskrit texts and their Tibetan renderings), Ulrike

746 Roesler’s paper shows how the study of textual reuse may help to reconstruct the

747 history of the library of an author, thus revealing features no longer present in the later

748 canonised versions of such libraries. Also Pascale Hugon’s study leads to interesting

749 conclusions about the reading habits of the scholars of epistemology up to Sa skya

750 Pan˙d˙ita in Tibet, thus showing how the focus on a different context (epistemology vs.

751 religion) can lead to partly overlapping and partly divergent results.

752 As for the geographic and cultural focus of the volume, I have been immensely

753 pleased to be able to discuss South Asia and not only Sanskrit India. Hugon and

754 Kieffer-Pulz have provided some background information on the Tibetan and Pali

755 contexts respectively. Within the latter, Kieffer-Pulz’, Neri’s and Ruiz-Falques’

756 articles discuss a similar period and in this sense the three Pali articles constitute a

757 small monographical work within the larger frame of this book, whereas the articles

758 dealing with Tibetan material (Del Toso’s, Hugon’s, Roesler’s) highlight different

759 aspects of the Tibetan culture and of its relations to Sanskrit models.

760 Sakai’s article is the only one focusing on a peculiar kind of reuse, i.e., self-reuse. In

761 fact, it analyses Dharmottara’s reuse of his own arguments from onework to the other.

762 This analysis contributes, on the one hand, to our understanding of the intellectual

763 background of such authors (which audience did one write for? when was one allowed

764 to write commentaries?, etc.) and on the other to the kind of editing at stake in each

765 instance of reuse. The fact thatDharmottara could reuse freely his ownworkmay, thus,

766 indirectly point to the general possibility of freely reusing materials one agreed with.

767 Last, Sakai’s study paves the way to an inquiry into reuse and originality (hinted at

768 above, section 4.5), which has been the topic of a panel at the 32nd Deutscher

769 Orientalisten Tag (Munster, September 2013) and will be the topic of a separate

770 volume (edited by me together with Philipp Maas, Freschi and Maas forthcoming a).

33 As a supplement to this statement, I am pleased to add that Cristina Bignami, Julia Hegewald and

myself will host a panel on reuse in the arts at the next EAAA conference, to take place in September

2014.


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771 Acknowledgments I started conceiving this study in 2009 during my time in Austria with a scholarship772 of the University of Milan and have been working on it with the help of funds from the University773 “Sapienza” in Rome and the FWF (as project leader of the Lise Meitner Project M 1437). In774 chronological order, I am happy to say that I am grateful to Karin Preisendanz, with whom I discussed the775 case of parallels in the Sankhya commentaries and the idea of using different shades of grey (see infra,776 Freschi), to Himal Trikha, with whom I discussed the formal aspect of the representation of textual reuse777 throughout the last five years, to Ernst Steinkellner for some intriguing discussions on our different778 approaches, to the participants of the Coffee Break Meeting on “Quotations and Re-Use in Sanskrit779 Sastras” held in Rome 2012,34 and to those who could not make it to Rome but contributed to this780 volume. Since the topic of textual reuse has become a sort of earworm for me, I discussed it with many781 colleagues of different fields, whose generous suggestions I acknowledged in the footnotes of this essay. I782 am further indebted to Shanti Graheli for valuable suggestions on the Western Middle Age case and to783 Petra Kieffer-Pulz for her accurate reading. I am also grateful to Erika Wieder for a final glance on all the784 articles. Parts of the sections 3 and 4 had been already published within Freschi 2012. Last, my deepest785 thanks go to my husband Alessandro for his continuous intellectual challenges and his deeper, unspoken786 support. This volume, for my part, is dedicated to him.787788 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License789 which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and790 the source are credited.

791 Appendix

792 See Fig. 1.

793

Fig. 1 A section of a Lanting Xu manuscript

34 The program and the abstracts of the meeting can be found here: http://asiatica.wikispaces.com/

quotations+and+re-use+of+texts+in+Sanskrit+texts.

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794 References

795 In accordance with the theme of this article, I quoted from many studies. Due to the lack of specific796 studies about the extent of the phenomenon in India, I relied also on materials about the Western797 scenario, which had the benefit of stressing unexpected similarities and dissimilarities.

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